336 chapter 8
Telhisü’l-beyan since it combines copying traditional descriptions or rules with
to-the-point advice on contemporaneous problems. However, Defterdar seems
to have placed more emphasis on the second element, i.e. concrete answers to
specific problems that he experienced during his administrative career. One
should note the emphasis he placed on bribery and on the need for admin-
istrative and financial appointments to be made for long periods; if possible,
for life. He often refers to older concepts, such as the circle of justice and the
“old law”. If his political allegiances are sought, it is tempting to see his attack
on the 1670s–1690s financial policies (such as his indignation at the “Sharia-
minded” abolition of price regulations by Fazıl Mustafa Pasha in 169127 and at
the widespread farming-out of revenues) as an expression of a new team of
policy-makers, one opposed to the Sunna-oriented policies (and discourse) of
the Köprülü viziers. His criticism of Beyazizade Efendi (d. 1687), the Rumili ka-
zasker whose actions appear to have been associated with Vani Efendi,28 seems
to corroborate this view. The fact that Defterdar was sympathetic to Mustafa
II’s autocratic policies is evident from his appointment as chief minister of
finances one year before the sultan’s downfall.
One may argue that his work represents the view of a particular group with-
in the government apparatus. His work was largely imitated or, more probably,
he had a circle of interlocutors who shared the same ideas and even copied
each other. It seems that they were all part of the scribal bureaucracy, and this
might account for both their similarity of interests and the common argu-
ments they employed. After all, Defterdar and his circle were part of the new
efendis-turned-pashas29 environment: that is to say, they were following the
scribal career just at the time it was beginning to allow access to the highest
posts in the administration. Thus, the existence of a circle of like-minded bu-
reaucrats associated with Mustafa II’s policies is an interesting hypothesis that
requires further research.
For one thing, a text of political and moral advice entitled Ta ’lîmâtnâme
(“Book of instructions”) and attributed to Şehid Ali Pasha (d. 1716), the grand
vizier (1713–16) who died during the campaign to reconquer Morea, is just a
shortened version of Defterdar’s Nesâ’ihü’l-vüzerâ; it is not impossible that
the former text was also written by Defterdar himself, either as a sketch of
27 Defterdar – Özcan 1995, 387–389; cf. Sariyannis 2012, 289.
28 Defterdar – Özcan 1995, 123–124, 210. Cf. Sariyannis 2005–2006, 253; on Beyazizade’s asso-
ciation with Vani, see Zilfi 1988, 202–204, 209. Defterdar’s assessment of Vani’s personality
also seems rather negative, as he says that “he did not abstain from vilifying and slander-
ing the state magnates” and that “he was a master of the science of attachment (fenn-i
intisab)”, i.e. a careerist: Defterdar – Özcan 1995, 210–211.
29 The category was dubbed thus by Itzkowitz 1962.